From House To Home: Our Journey

We Have A New Home!

2012-07-07T06:28:00.002-04:00

Bright Little House has a new home at: http://itsabrightlife.com/brightlittlehouse/

Come see us over there and watch us grow!

Sorta Crunchy Just Like Me

2012-02-15T00:06:00.003-05:00

So it has been a long time since I've blogged.. poop! I stink at this. Well, it makes sense actually, I never could keep a journal or diary. I always wanted to be one of those people that kept a journal. I thought that if I just tried harder I would do it. I have shelves of journals I've started and lost interest in along the way. I just can't keep myself focused on writing everyday. At least I can remember to brush my teeth every morning and night. My mother did a good job of drilling that into my head very early on.

I actually spend a lot of time reading other people's blogs. It's an obsession! I actually lay in bed in the morning after my alarm goes off and spend a few minutes surfing the web. I watch YouTube videos or scroll through beloved blogs. I tell my husband it 'wakes' me up in the morning, but in actuality it is just a time waster, the shower is what actually wakes me up in the morning. But I am not going to give up my morning routine. It is my equivalent to reading the newspaper.
I have an ever fluctuating schedule with school and work. Every three months it changes. So I don't know if I will always be able to enjoy the luxury of laying in bed in the morning. Next quarter (March) I will have 8am classes, which means I will be getting up at 6am... No doubt I won't be laying in bed those days, I'll fall back asleep if I do!
Right now my schedule is perfect. I have two days where my class starts at 10am and two days where my classes are 6-11pm. Which is great for Adam and I, he works nights and this gives me time with him when he comes home. I will be in bed way before Adam gets home next quarter. (So sad)

The other morning I came across a blog post from Megan at Sorta Crunchy that really spoke to me. I've never come across her blog before (I love when I find new blogs), but I was so moved by her post I had to print it up and tape it to my sketchbook/Journal.
The post basically was about her personality type and how she feels she needs a warning label.

Here is a part of her post..(Well, Basically it is the majority of her post):

I think the reason I find such comfort in understanding my personality type is that I struggle with feeling like I am defective ... As much as I have grown into my skin, grown into who I was created to be as my 30s have unfolded, I still can't shake a perpetual belief that deep, deep down, I am broken.

And so when I read assessments that pretty much perfectly describe how I function in this world, I can't help but to feel better. It's not just me.

People with my personality type tend to live by a strict internal code. When my outward actions don't match my inward idealistic standards, I am miserable. And yet ... I am prone to just thinking about how I am unable to do what I know I need to do instead of acting on what I need to do.

I truly do feel like I need a warning label:

WARNING: The person you are meeting, speaking to, reading, or emailing is most often experienced by others as flaky.

She operates in the world of The Big Picture, and therefore details often fall off of her radar screen.

She will most likely:

1) Read your email and need to think on a response. She will then forget to email you the response, even though she has spent a good deal of time thinking about it.

2) Hear your prayer concern and feel a great deal of empathy for you and your situation. She will probably think about you for days, praying for you often as you come to mind. She will, however, neglect to tell you this.

3) Recognize that you are going through a difficult time and think of no less than a dozen elaborate and thoughtful ways to minister to you in your need. She will probably act on none of these ideas, even though she has given them all a great deal of thought.

4) Be your biggest supporter and cheerleader at the beginning of a project. Her enthusiasm will eventually fizzle. She is distracted easily by shiny things. Going the distance is not her strong suit.

5) Agree to read and review your newest book or project. Weeks will pass before a review is finally published. This does not mean that she did not love your project; on the contrary, she probably loved it so much that she feels her review of your work must be absolutely perfect before she can publish it. She is often crushed by the weight of her own standards which propels her directly into inaction accompanied by guilt.

6) Interrupt you. Her mind is constantly making connections, often at a speed which outpaces human speech and good manners.

7) Astound you with her incredible clumsiness. This may or may not be related to her personality type, but you should have fair warning nonetheless.

8) Start a multitude of projects and finish few.

9) Not take criticism well. She is keenly aware of her shortcomings and imperfections, always hyper-aware of the ways her outward actions don't meet her inner standards. When those imperfections are recognized by others, it can be crippling.

10) Personify capriciousness, fickleness, moodiness, and procrastination. She is also prone to being driven by her feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelings.

If you have the great misfortune of partnering with her on a project or serving as her editor, please know that she will accomplish absolutely nothing without a deadline. Be assured, however, that she rarely misses deadlines altogether as she is capable of intense micro-focus and dedicated energy as a deadline approaches.

Finally, if you are counting on her to take an action of some sort, she will probably disappoint you. And even if you aren't actually disappointed with her, she probably thinks that you are.

Do you think I could have that printed up on business cards to hand to people I meet?

This is all very true about me, but I'm not telling you to garner any sympathy or to have you respond with warm fuzzies. In fact, I'm closing comments on this. And I'm not sobbing at the keyboard as I write, either. In fact, I amused myself quite a bit as I thought of all of the ways people should be warned about me.

These are just some things I thought you should know. Tomorrow, I'll be sharing with you the other side of the shiny coin that is moi.

(Ohhhhhhh, shiny . . . ) <- (Adam found this funny..Apparently I'm drawn to sparkles and glittery things.. )

I feel the same way, I most definitely need a warning label.

I hope that it gives me hope and inspiration to overcome my personality obstacles and to sooth my heart when I feel like a failure at being the best I can be.
I am making resolutions (not the new years kind, just personal ones) to try to make an effort to sketch in my sketchbook, to write down things of importance in my journal, and to post more here on my blog. We will see how I do at this for the next few months. I should update the blog with what has happened since the last time I posted. (not a whole lot...)

This is Halloween..Everybody make a Scream

2011-10-15T22:50:00.001-04:00

Halloween might be the 'fun-est' holiday there is! You could say it's totally jovial! And yes, we might like Halloween more than any 7-year-old should and as such we had tohave some background decorating music on.

There may have been some booty shaking while Adam fist pumped to our very own Halloween mix. Yeees! We're middle schoolers with facial hair and boobs.

Anyway, I thought that you might like to see our Halloween mix. It might inspire you to break out your own Halloween dance moves and decor.

http://www.musiclist.us/mc/mp3player_new.swf

In case you can't play the player above.

We also love kids movies, so here are a list of movies we like to watch in October:

The Nightmare Before Christmas- our ultimate favorite, we have all the lyrics in this movie memorized!
It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown
Any Goosebumps movie
Halloween Town
Hocus Pocus- with Bette Midler and Sara Jessica Parker
Double Double Toil & Trouble- who doesn't love a little Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen on the holidays.
Practical Magic- (not a kids movie, but not scary)
Death Becomes Her- not a kids movie, but I love Goldie Hawn
The Witches
Beetlejuice
Any Harry Potter movie- while it's not necessarily a Halloween movie it's magical none the less.
Matilda- Also not really Halloween, but magical
Jim Henson's Labrinth- not halloween, but magical
Corpse Bride- not a favorite, but a creepy kids movie thats good for Halloween.
Ahhh! Real Monsters t.v. show- not Halloween, but fun for Halloween.
Black Cauldron
A Simple Wish
Any Halloween Rugrats- my favorite t.v. show when I was 12 years old. Yes I was too old to still be watching it at 12, and yes I still watch it... I'll never grown up, I'm a child at heart!

Hope You enjoyed our Halloween Music and viewing lists. Happy Halloween!

Boo-tastic!

2011-10-15T17:14:00.001-04:00

Adam and I LOVE Halloween.
It is our second favorite holiday, Christmas being our most favorite holiday. We really get into the holiday spirit and have always loved getting into costume and decorating our place.

This year we focused more on the outside of the house and tried to make a big statement without a lot of money.

I had an idea to put a giant spider on the roof, but when I looked for giant spiders in stores they were all too small, too expensive and too realistic (I imagined a GIANT cute fuzzy spider). So I decided to make our own spider.
My first thought was to sew a spider.... Then I realized, ME, sewing. Haha. That wasn't going to work. Then, Adam came up with the idea of using trash bags filled with leaves and for the legs we could use the left over corrugated pipe we had. It was BRILLIANT! I loved it, but when we stepped back it just looked like trash on our roof, so I thought why not use some of my craft supplies to cutesy it up.

I found a butt-load of purple tinsel garland and a roll of purple ribbon. Adam wrapped the tinsel around the legs and the ribbon around the body of the spider.
Then we headed to Wally world (walmart) and picked up a bag of styrofoam balls. I used left over sample paint from our front door to paint them red and glitter that I already had in my craft stash. Adam hot glued the eyeballs and attached the spider's head to the body.
It looked Awesome! It was better than what I had imagined.

Then Adam brought down our box of Halloween decor from the attic and we decorated the rest of the house. I might have mentioned here that we like classy and upscale decor.. no blow up Halloween decor. Well, we bought a blow up Halloween decoration! Yep, we're just letting it all hang out this year! And I totally don't care if it's a total cheese fest. We are having so much more fun this year.

We hope all of you are having a excellent Autumn! Happy Halloween!

I replaced the Autumn wreath with something spookier..

I made this wreath a few years ago. I leave it up from late August till after Thanksgiving (excluding October)

I made this wreath a few years ago. It's one of two Halloween wreaths I've made.

This little guy is spookily hovering over Adam. Ooh, creepy.

This was my attempt at making the front look better. Haha.

What You Missed While I Was Gone.

2011-09-23T02:00:00.000-04:00

I might have jumped off the proverbial blogger cliff, but I didn't stop for a second in the real world. So here are a few things you may have missed while I was gone.

I alluded to outdoor change in this blog post, but never got around to telling you what we did.
We bought retaining wall bricks or stones (what-ev) and we Adam dug around the tree in our front yard and stacked 'em up. Looks ten times better, never mind the fact that we ran out of ~~money~~ steam and didn't complete the backside of the tree mound. From the front it looks AWESOME. Yeah. pretty exciting stuff. So exciting in fact that we decided to do the same thing to the front (in front of the basement windows) and around our walkway to the front door.
This will have to come next year I think.. we've already moved on. Darn that ADD! Can't see anything through to fruition. (I think that might have been written on a report card once in my life..I had a bit of deja vu writing that last sentence.)

Before (when we first saw the house):

Adam working hard on the project:

The AWESOME After:

Yep. There you have it. We've done a few more things around the house while I was gone. I have to update you on that later. More to come!

Autumn Already, Where Did The Time Go?

2011-09-22T07:00:00.000-04:00

Sorry I have been away for so long. School sort of sucks the will-to-blog right out of me. But, I'm back again. I have good news, I have again done excellent in school. Yes, I just did a virtual pat on the back...to myself. What can I say, I'm proud.

So I'm learning the basics of design and just finished a class on Layout. So if you don't know what that means (mom) here it is simplified: Basically it is the arrangement of 'whatever' to a pleasing affect.

Example: A magazine has words (articles) and pictures arranged on a piece of paper. The layout of these words and pictures is very important, so the viewer/reader can understand what an article is about. It also will grab the reader's attention and entice them to read the article (or look at the pictures). The layout must be clear and easy to read.

Another example would be website layout: A person or client might go to a company's website to purchase something or to find directions/ information. If the website is cluttered and the client doesn't know where the information is or cannot find the product, then most likely they will leave the site and that company has lost business. The worst possible layout design for a website would be where there isn't a logo or company name clearly labeled: the client would open the website up, but the site isn't clear whether or not this is even the right company.

The class was fun and informative, but made me think about my (neglected) blog and I wondered if I would be able to use my new knowledge of layout software on it. Unfortunately I only know the design side and haven't learned how to implement it yet. Since I'm impatient I've recently started looking into how to change the design of my blog, only to discover that I know... NOTHING! Ahh.
It seems that I know less than the average person. Which is shocking to me since I thought I knew a little bit more than the average joe. Apparently to make a blog or website better you must use HTML or CSS... ( of course I had to look up what the heck those things mean). I now know that HTML and CSS have something to do with the computer. ...yep thats all.
I read wikipedia, blogs and googled my heart out only to understand a bunch of gobblety-gook that told me nothing about what it really was. All I understood was that it was hard to understand.
So I'm in a slow, very very slow, process of trying to understand coding. (which is what wikipedia told me HTML and CSS is, haha)
I've decided that I can't be the only person who is as clueless as I am, so I've decided to update what I learn through the process of changing my own blog. Hopefully it will help someone 'out there' who maybe ~~needed it~~ wanted to know how to do it too.

Spring Has Sprung

2011-05-13T20:11:00.001-04:00

Spring is here at Bright Little House! We've started planning our landscape and we are soo excited!
We are going to be adding retaining walls around the front and we will finally be adding much needed shrubs and flowers to the front yard. The backyard will be cleaned up and hopefully we can purchase some patio furniture.
I am going to be searching Craigslist.com and yard-sales for deals on the furniture.

Here are some retaining walls, we used these for ideas:

                                                 (unknown source)

                                                      (unknown source)

Of course I wish our walls will look like this, all grown in and lush:

(http://www.anchorblock.com/assets/ProductRotate/pd_windsor2.jpg)

And these are some of the flower/shrub ideas we've had:

(http://www.gardensablaze.com/Landscaping/IslandBedPerennials2.jpg)

(source unknown)

I dream:

    (http://www.cleanme.us/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/perennial-plants.jpg)

         (source unknown)

(http://www.marjoriesgarden.com/images/5.jpg)

                              (unknown source)

So here's a look at where we began:

The Before:

The During, (last year):

This week:

(unfortunately those bushes we transplanted from elsewhere didn't live once the Georgia sun started to get summer hot...so we'll have to buy more bushes for the front.)
Soo..
Next up....The beautiful AFTER...

Hanging Up

2011-04-02T09:10:00.080-04:00

We've finally have blinds! Yay. We knew we would buy nice wooden blinds eventually, but since we still have to replace all the windows in the house, we decided buying expensive blinds first wouldn't be the best choice for us. We know we are widening a few of them so they wouldn't be the same size.

But, we needed something up for privacy and to let the light in since the curtains darken the rooms and I can't stand it. I like light! A lot!

So, Adam had a great idea, while at Home Depo he noticed temporary blinds on sale for .10 cents.

(Temporary blinds are the blinds the store gives you to put up while you wait for your order of custom blinds to come in. They are a vinyl- like material and they stick to your wall, like a sticker.)
He bought a bunch of them. One or two for each window.
Temp blinds look very nice (compared to sheets :-D) and they filter light beautifully. Best cheap idea yet. We love them and I'm so happy Adam bought them. It really helped our house feel more complete. We were both getting sick of the multitude of curtains. I think curtains should be for beauty and a little function, but not the only thing on the window. It gets to be too much. We felt like we were living in a cave enshrouded with fabric. If we wanted to open a window we had to dig through layers of fabric.

It is very simple to install temporary blinds. You just measure your window, then measure your blinds and cut off any remaining length:

Then you stick-em to the wall.

After we installed the blinds in the kitchen we both stepped back and found that it didn't look right.

I had the idea that perhaps they should be hung higher up- like to the ceiling- and it worked! The blinds looked much better.

Then the next thing on our list was to hang the Target frames that I saved up for, but never found the time to hang. I fell in love with these simple white frames and I knew just where I wanted them.
We taped the paper backing to the wall first for placement (to make sure it was where we wanted them before we put holes in the wall):

Then after we hung the frames, I filled them with artwork from school. I still have to recieve another piece of artwork from school to fill the bottom frame in the picture below, so in this picture it is just the cardboard back to the fram showing:

After learning that it might be awhile before I get my artwork back (it is on display in the hallways at school) I decided to put something pretty in its place. I then cut a piece of fabric to fit inside the frame and hung it up:

I actually LOVE it! I just might have to hang it up else where when I have my artwork back.

In this picture below I have switched the bottom and top frames, so the fabric is on the top:

I really love this wallpaper from Anthropologie, but I can only take small doses of so much color, so I'm thinking about hanging some of the wallpaper here behind the shelves (once we get around to adding them..so far we only have one shelf up!) for a pop of color. You can see a sample of it here on the wall behind the cookbooks:

AND we finally hung up the diningroom mirror. Although it isn't as big as I had hoped it would be, I'll find some way to fill in around it. Maybe I'll hang two giant black frames on either side of the gilded mirror? We'll see...

Dining Room Chair Makeover

2011-03-27T03:30:00.003-04:00

When we first bought Bright Little House we didn't have any furniture, so anything anyone could give us was a BIG help. Fortunately our parents gave us a dining room table as a housewarming present. Unfortunately, we didn't have any chairs. I don't know if you know this, but chairs are ex-pennn-sive and our budget was F-R-E-E. So, we went yard sale-ing as soon as we could. We hit the jack pot and bought a grandma's whole garage full of stuff for about $75.00. That included a sofa and love seat, two reclining wing-back chairs, 6 dining room chairs, 6 kitchen table chairs, a mid-century modern night stand, and a mid-century modern sofa table. The dining room chairs were a match for the table, but they weren't a match for our taste and they really needed a makeover!

Thanks to Jo Ann Fabrics' coupon in the mail, we headed to get some new fabric for 20% off any purchase.

(Well, it was more like, I went to the mail box, saw the coupon, had a light bulb moment, and proceeded to plan till Adam got home from work; then ~~begged~~ tried to persuade Adam that it was what HE really wanted ~~while jumping up and down with coupon in my sweaty fists~~.)

We knew we wanted to paint the chairs white and we weren't sure yet on any particular color scheme for the house. So, we decided a neutral color that would go with any color would be the best decision.
Once we were there we headed to the Clearance section and pulled out anything that looked good, then we eliminated any fabrics that were too thin (which left us with all the higher priced 'Home Decor' fabrics). We couldn't decide on our favorite two fabrics. One was a tan linen and the other was a very pale grey (more like a grey-white). Since we were pretty sure we wanted to paint the walls grey we went with the light white-grey fabric. Turns out that the other fabric didn't have enough yards for our project anyway, so the grey was a no-brainer in the end (once we got it home we saw that it actually almost matched the white painted chairs. Which made a beautiful monochrome look; which we liked better than what we thought the grey would look like.)

Since the fabric was on clearance and we had a 20% discount thanks to our mail coupon, we were able to afford this little makeover. Yay!
So, with roll of fabric in hand we headed off to Home Depo to purchase a few cans of High Gloss white spray paint. Which was free thanks to Adam's gift card.
Thank you baby for spending it on me and my crazy spur of the moment ideas.

So, with out further ado...

Here are BEFORE shots (from Halloween):

Alex Kitty

Here are shots of the cleaning process:

I used an old bucket filled with warm water, a drop of dish soap, as well as, a tiny sprinkle of OxiClean (for good measure). To scrub, I had old car cleaning brushes and I scrubbed the heck outta those chairs. ( I had to be gentle around the rattan parts because they are delicate and warped a little when wet- but they straightened back out when they dried)

Adam removed the old fabric from the seats and stretched and stapled the new fabric on.

There was three layers of old fabric under those chairs, the last one was lime green crushed velvet..it was pretty yuckie.

After painting white:

With re-upholstered fabric:

With the gold napkin rings:

The dining room is still in progress..we will paint the walls (again, that color was oops paint bought at Home Depo just in time for our Thanksgiving guests), buy a buffet table, rug, lamps, hang the mirror and some art, and well, we want to eventually get new carpet. We originally wanted wood floors, but since this home will be rented out in a few years while we're away in college in another city, we decided carpet is the easiest to replace if the renters ruin the floor.

* The napkin rings are from Pier 1, the table cloth was purchased at Home Goods (the pakaging said Badgley Mishka), the napkins are Target, the glasses are Wal-mart (water glasses) as well as the gravey bowl, and the dishes were bought at Goodwill, but they say Thomson Pottery on the bottoms.

Snow Day!!

2011-01-10T22:29:00.003-05:00

We had a surprising amount of snow today here in Atlanta. The most I've ever seen here since I was little. We had a few blizzards here when I was in elementary school. We didn't have nearly as much this time, but it was still exciting and enough to shut the whole town down.

Here is a photo of Bright Little House with her pretty white dress on:

We only had 5 inches here at the house which is not a lot to northerners, but here in the south we are not used to more than an inch.
We don't prepare for snow. We don't have snow plows, snow tires, or window scrapers and salt for our driveways. We haven't enough experience with driving on ice and slush. Most of us don't have any snow gloves or boots.
The snow ended up shutting down all the schools for a week! The neighborhood kids had a blast sliding up and down the road we live on.

To those who have snow- I hope you had fun playing in it today! We did. :-)

Wedding Post

2010-12-14T21:15:00.003-05:00

Well I promised you I'd tell you all about our story of how we met and married, so here I go.

Adam and I met while working at a restaurant, he was a Sou Chef and I was a food runner. He asked me out through the food window. It was really embarrassing! I had never been asked on a date before and I didn't know how to be nice and also let someone down. I wasn't interested in him in that way and I just wanted to be friends. Luckily for me he was very persistent and agreed to be my friend. We started hanging out everyday and talked on the phone till late in the night. (he used to play DJ for me and played songs for me on the phone, I'd fall asleep listening.) After a few weeks we became very close and I started falling in love with him. We talked about marriage, kids, the future and after a while we realized we were perfect for each other. He proposed to me on the 4th of July while we were out with my family. Right when the fireworks went off. It was really sweet.

We then started planning our wedding. I didn't want to have a big to-do and I wanted to keep it casual. I wanted it at my parents house and I wanted just my immediate family and close friends. I did have three requirements though: One, that I would have a beautiful gown; Two, I LOVE flowers and I wanted to have beautiful bouquets; and Three, I wanted to hire someone to take photos so I'd always have the memories in photos for all of prosperity.

Adam had only one requirement: that we would only spend 2,000-4,000 dollars. We succeeded at frugality and brought it in around 2,000. We used all local small businesses and grabbed some great deals. We let our bridesmaids choose what color they wanted and then let them buy whatever dress they wanted in that color. Two of them already had gold dresses so they saved even more money!

I even got to wear TWO beautiful gowns since I found a shop that was donating designer gowns to charity. They had gone around and collected last season sample dresses from top designers and sold them for $50!!!! Most of them still had original price tags on them and the one I bought had been priced around $2,000. Boy did I hit the jackpot right?!! Since they were so cheap and it was for charity I went back and bought another.

Anyway, here are some photos....

Getting my hair done.

Adam getting our get away car loaded up with our suitcases and Kleenex apparently....

HAHAHA Rick cracks us up! He's so silly. I love it.

My mommie!

Adam and 'his' Rick.

The Best man and the Groom.

Me and my Daddy.

Happy Holidays!

2010-12-13T21:33:00.000-05:00

I thought I'd give you all a glimpse of our tree! I love Christmas trees, they look so sparkly and mesmerizing. I love laying on the couch late at night just staring at it.
This Christmas season is just flying by. We've been to busy to enjoy it, it's really a shame. Next year we'll do better. We promise. ;-)

Hopefully everyone else is having a great Christmas season!

It's December, Our Favorite Month

2010-12-02T20:43:00.006-05:00

The month of December holds a lot of meaning for us. Not only is it the festive month of Christmas (which we both Luurve), but it is also the month we chose to be married in.
This month will be Wedding Month for us. We have only been married for three years so we still are newlyweds really. We decorate our tree with our wedding ornaments, we just have so many it would be foolish not to anyway. One day I will go ahead and buy new ornaments in actual Christmas colors (instead of blue and white) I love all the options there are to decorate with. Obviously there is red and green, but then there are gold and silver, red and white, green and white, silver and green, gold red and ivory, all gold and white, and I could go on and on...

Anyway I digress.
I will refresh your memories for those of you who were there and give those of you who couldn't come to our wedding a little tour. I also will give a little background on how we met.
I love photos so you can be sure to see lots of those.

Thanksgiving Photos

2010-11-28T02:30:00.000-05:00

Choosing a paint color for the dining room.

Anything other than the pale blue/grey oops paint.

We have gas! A working stove is very important.

We have cabinet shelves, Yay!

Making the gravy.

My homemade fall wreath.

Another big improvement, we have silverware holders in our drawers now.

Adam made the turkey just right. It's my favorite recipe and this was his first time using it.

Busy Birds Don't Write Much

2010-11-28T00:59:00.000-05:00

Sorry about disappearing on you all. I've now officially gone back to college. It has been something I've wanted to do for a long time and I finally had the opportunity. I am going to a art school for a bachelor of fine arts in Illustration and I started in October. Right away I was swamped with work to do. Working full-time while going to school full-time doesn't leave much room for blogging. I will try to update you when ever I can. I love to write about myself, what can I say. Haha.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving, ours was wonderful. We had it here at the house for the first time. It was nice having the space for entertaining, finally.

The Story on How I Went Back to School

2010-10-07T21:57:00.000-04:00

I finally am back in school. It was unexpected, Adam and I didn't think we would be able to afford it, but here I am a full time student! It will be hard trying to juggle school, work, husband and house, but I am so excited and I know I will love it!

Here is the story,
I graduated high school years ago and was accepted at the art school of my choice (a very expensive school). I started classes that January and went for only one semester, tuition is expensive! So I started to save up and worked full time. Then I met Adam and we married. Thus making me an independent. Which means I now qualify for grants I didn't before thanks to my parents income. I know right!
Well, I had been so busy over the years that school was shuffled to my 'Things To Dream About' list. We didn't really know how much we would get in grants and we knew we couldn't afford school unless it was totally paid for, so we just assumed it would have to happen sometime in the future.
Then I started a new job and my new friend Kimberly (AKA Kimmie) and I started talking about school. She is going back to school to do what she always wanted, to be a Psychologist. (Talk about difficult schooling, Phew!) She told me her school is paid for by scholarships and Grants and she was sure I could get enough to pay for school also. I swear she is my little angel in disguise. She gave me the very firm kick in the butt that I needed. Once she heard my little story of how I came to put school on hold, she went into action! While I was out getting us lunch, she was on the phone making it happen! She called my school and made an appointment for us to see a counselor the very next day, much to my surprise! Isn't she wonderful! I owe her everything! I would have probably never made it happen.
We were told I would need to re-apply since it had been so long since I had last attended, so I was prepared for a long process of being accepted and going through financial aid, so I wasn't prepared for what would happen next! When I arrived for my appointment I was lead to a office and spoke with a counselor, told him everything and he lead me to another office where I spoke with someone else, told her my story and she handed me a stack of papers and told me that before we could proceed with anything I would need to have these papers signed by a list of people and come back to her. So off I went to EVERY building to have 12 people sign and then I went back to her and we had a chat while I waited for her to become free (she was helping other students). She was concerned about my work schedule, asked me a lot of questions about classes I was interested in taking and then she printed up something and turned to me with my class schedule! I totally didn't see that one coming, I thought it would be a lengthy process and maybe I would be able to attend next fall! So I asked her, "When do I start?" and she told me I'd be starting next quarter. Wow, that's alot sooner than I expected, but I thought at least I have a month or two..wrong I found out later that 'next quarter' started next week!! Why didn't she just tell me that to begin with! So I had to break the news gently to Adam and it turned out that he was super proud of me and was happy to have the added expense if it made me happy.

So Much Stuff, So Little Money

2010-09-19T18:07:00.000-04:00

Went to Ikea this morning before work. Bought curtains, rods, sheets and had to be dragged out kicking and screaming by Adam who worried I'd spend all our money....I love Ikea.
I'll post some pictures once the curtains are up.

The Miracle Of Paint

2010-09-15T00:48:00.001-04:00

I had a semi-ok day today and as I drove home I thought about all the things I still had to do at home. A little disheartening, but when I pulled into my drive way and walked up to our door I noticed something was different. My kitchen WAS WHITE!

Adam had the day off today and apparently he spent it painting our kitchen. He is my hero! I sooo hate to paint. I love picking out colors and I love painting furniture, but painting a WHOLE ROOM is my least favorite thing to do. I'm a slow painter and it takes forever. After spending the whole summer painting the whole basement and the upstairs rooms you could say I'm all pooped outta painting.

Buuutt, Now I can cross that task off my list!! Hallelujah!

THIS is what my face looked like when I first saw what Adam had been up to:

Yeah, I was pretty excited.

I'll show you the before and after pictures 'cause you know that's what you really came to see, but keep in mind we're still not really finished. These aren't really 'afters' yet. We need to buy hardware, finish paint, blinds and curtains, shelves, benches, and a table. Um, I think that's it? I'm sure we'll find more along the way.

Our kitchen BEFORE I left for work today:

Our kitchen AFTER I came home today:

It's amazing what paint can do to transform a room. The kitchen feels so much bigger now and it feels like a crisp new kitchen. I love it.

I hope this inspires me to keep painting, I still have a lot more on that list to do...

Wish me luck and I wish you some inspiration to get things done in your life that you're dreading too. Good luck to you all.

Love Britt :-)

Another One Bites The Dust

2010-09-10T01:22:00.000-04:00

Yes!! I can cross off one of my goals...start the happy dance now.

Today Adam surprised me when I came home from work with WORKING KITCHEN OUTLETS!! We now have a stove and dishwasher. Ahhh. Feels good to have things working like they're supposed to.

Here's my baby working on the dishwasher's outlet.

Most wonderful Man in the WORLD!

I also swung by the local Dollar Tree to see what cheap-o Halloween decor I could pick-up to satisfy my need for holiday home fun! I try to keep it at a grown-up elegant level...no blow up headless horse men here, but I just can't help but LOVE it ALL!! It brings out the little kid in me. I look forward to decorating every year. So since we're dead broke..I went to the Dolla' store. Enter cute doormat Here:

Cute Dollar Store Mat

I thought I'd throw in a few pictures of my Halloween table setting. I know it's early, but I was opening all our halloween decor from boxes so I was gettingin the mood and decided to decorate.

Halloween Tablescape

Cool Black Scull Candle From Micheals

This is what our dining room looks like right now...ignore the mess...my excuse is we just moved.

Hope I gave you some holiday spirit!

Love Britt :-)

Feeling A Little Overwhelmed

2010-09-08T01:04:00.000-04:00

I feel like we will never get our house in order. Grrr. My list of things that we need to do (and save up for so we CAN do) seems to get longer by the minute. Everyday I notice something new that needs fixing or a touch up. *Le Sigh*
Don't even get me started on The Laundry Room Of Doom! My dream laundry/ mudroom is right now just a concrete slab (and no, not pretty, paintable concrete. It's rough, uneven, poke your bare feet concrete) with unfinished walls that need sanding and spackle and an archaic, ugly washer and dryer. Talk about depressing!

To Do List:
Fix kitchen outlets before Thanksgiving
Prime and paint kitchen cabinets before Thanksgiving
Hang shelves Before Thanksgiving
Sand and spakle kitchen walls before Thanksgiving
Prime and paint kitchen, dining room, living room, guest bathroom and hallway walls...please!
Sand and spackle laundry room walls
Paint laundry room walls
Fix leak in laundry room floor
Buy and apply concrete sealant
Buy and hang blinds, curtains, or roman shades for windows (we hung sheets..Tre tacky. I know)
Paint trim and windows white
Paint carport windows and door

BUT!
My goal as of right now is to just get the kitchen cabinets primed and painted so we can install the shelves and finally start to put away our kitchen things. I'm so sick of living out of boxes! I don't know when we'll find the extra time, but we desperately need to do this before Thanksgiving! Everyone will be coming here!!
To top it all off, our stove and dishwasher outlets currently do not work, Adam's car windows decided to roll on outta sight, and our taxes (to the tune of 1,300) are do in November. Yay me...

P.S.
You may be wondering what we do without a pantry or cabinets that have shelves so I snapped a quick picture of our "pantry". Wouldn't you go crazy too!?

AND I became so sick of frozen microwaved dinners (No stove or oven!!) so I decided to do a little yard sale-ing and bought a gas grill for Adam...our first real grill. I could kiss that thing (and Adam kissed me, let me tell you). It saved me and my bland food world!

Now Adam was at first upset due to the fact that we haven't a single dime to spare, but then I showed him how much money we saved living off Ramun noodles the last few weeks and explained how I used last weeks leftover "food budget" money to buy our grill. 50 bucks! Soooo happy!

Sorry Mom!

2010-09-04T21:24:00.000-04:00

I'm so sorry I've been a bad blogger (and daughter) and haven't been posting. I now have INTERNET again. It has been a loooong few months without access to the outside world via world wide web. I never realized how much one really uses the internet until I was without it for awhile. I know you missed me! Haha. I'm back and will be posting updates. You have a lot to catch up on!

Happy Fall Y'all !!

2010-09-04T21:15:00.000-04:00

I love how Fall seems to appear overnight. You just wake up one morning and it's cool outside, instead of being so thick and hot you can't breathe! Today has been such a pleasant day! Tonight I actually broke out a cardigan! Yay!
Bring on the Holidays, the colors, and the FOOD!
Boy do I love fall...and Christmas, but I always throw that in with fall. I mean, I live in Georgia! Winter doesn't start here till January and lasts till March.
I hope everyone has a wonderful fall. You better start preparing those pumpkins...

Paid road trip!! Check it out.

2010-06-18T00:34:00.000-04:00

PAID to ROADTRIP ! YES PLEASE! I want $ 1,500! SEAR's is paying for people to travel and write about it!! Go to: www.Exploringmyamerica.com SERIOUSLY!!! I'd go if I didn't have to work!

I found this while on Craigslist.com. They were trying to get people to apply. Wish I could go, so I'm sharing it with you. Hopefully someone will get to go on this AWESOME opportunity!! Goodluck!

The Backyard= The Amazon...Well not really.

2010-06-14T14:57:00.000-04:00

When we first saw our Bright Little House we were so overwhelmed by her backyard that we have a hard time remembering anything else from that first day...except maybe our memory of sitting in our car in her driveway and looking at each other with stunned silence. I mean there wasn't much to say... It was that bad.

We could have called our house 'Grey Gardens' haha...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_Gardens

But once we got over the initial shock of her state, we could start to see her beauty and decided to go for it. After that we rolled up our sleeves and got to work. The more we cleaned her up the more we began to fall in love with her. Bright Little House went from our starter/ investment home to "maybe she'll be our forever home?". We can't imagine selling her at this point, I know we can't see what the future might bring us..maybe we will one day grow out of her and need to move on, but that seems so far in the future.

So I will show you how we fell in love with our Bright Little House..

The first thing we tackled right after signing papers was the backyard. Weeds had been left to grow for so long that some of them were taller then seven feet!

See...

I don't know how long it was left to seed, but all of the 'knock out' or wild roses had started to grow new plants from their roots! It took several days, a lot of hard manual work, and a rented tractor...

Because we all know I love PICTURES more than anything else, I'm posting more pictures than words..I guess this will be less 'blog' and more photo album. Oh well.
Here are some before and after pictures.

Backyard side view, Before :

Backyard side view, After (as of now):

Backyard #1, Before :

Backyard #1, During (Adam and his weedwacker):

Backyard #1, After: I'll have to up date this later...I can't find this picture.

Backyard #2, Before:
Backyard #2, After:

Here are Before shots of the 'Basement Apartment Side':

Here are the After shots of the 'Basement Apartment Side':

Here are front yard Before photos:

And here is a front yard after:

Hope Ya'll enjoy! There will be more of these before and afters to come....

Our Guest Bathroom

2010-06-03T23:20:00.000-04:00

When we first went to see our house it was listed as four bedrooms and two bathrooms. When we finally saw it in person we realized it wasn't what we thought, which was 4 bedrooms upstairs along with two bathrooms, one which would be a master and one which would be a guest bath, BUT it was actually three bedrooms, one giant bathroom upstairs and a separate one bedroom/one bath apartment down in the basement. That set-up is nice, but wouldn't fly for us. We will be having LOTS of kids and family members and sharing a bath together sounded like a National Lampoon vacation....so we measured walls and wrote it all out on paper to figure out how we could fit another bathroom in the small space upsairs. We were able to fit a bathtub, toilet, and sink into that small space. We're extremely proud of ourselves. We decided to eliminate the linen and coat closet, along with thier hallway to add more space since there was already another linen closet anyway on the other side of the stairs. So we tore down walls and roughed in plumbing. We did most of the tearing apart ourselves, but when it came to plumbing we hired a professional. The first thing we did was rip up the old nasty carpet in the bathroom and found TILE underneath!! Why, why, why would somone put carpet over perfectly good, albiet outdated, tile? We were shocked. At first we thought we'd keep the tile, but we soon figured out that years of being moist under carpet had loosened the grout and cement and a few tiles had begun to pop off on thier own. Then we started taking everything apart and called a pro, Here is the bathroom upstairs BEFORE: Here is the hallway and closets... At the back of this linen closet is the top, of the roof, of the stairs going down to the basement apartment. And on the other side, is the coat closet for the house, so if you had guests they would have had to come upstairs to take off thier coat. Conviently the closets were right next to the sink and tub so we could open up the walls and use that square footage. Here is our GUEST BATHROOM during: Here is a quick video of our beautiful guest bathroom: